SOC2069
Researching
Social Life 1

Designing social research

Dr. Chris Moreh

Outline

  1. Information and data
  2. Interests and questions
  3. Casing and sampling
  4. Methods and ethics

Information and data

1 2 3 4

Information

1 2 3 4

  • “Are we human, or are we denser?” 1

Information

1 2 3 4

  • “Are we human, or are we denser dancer?” 1
  • Social research is all about ‘taming’ information

  • Learning research methods is a bit like learning to dance
  • another point
  • Salsa dancing or something more structured?

Contd

  • the question of how to capture informatiion in an efficient way for sociological analysis

  • the ‘map and the territory’ question

  • something else

“Even if it were possible to observe people closely as their lives proceeded, we could not guarantee that this strategy would collect”truer” information, especially about such unobservable matters as motivations, perceptions, and views ” (Gerson and Damaske 2020:20?)

  • also the question of ‘stories’; for this, see also Byrne (2002)

  • stories about cases, individual or ‘variables’ :::

Topic

  • a picture that needs attribution here…

Curtesy of someone who made this

3

  • thick description

  • ‘explanatory’ rather than ‘predictive analysis’ (Gerson and damaske 2020; 14)(Gerson and Damaske 2020)

  • “what,” “why,” and “how” questions. - ‘depth interviewing’ that connect inductive approaches to theory

  • what can small samples tell us?

Sanpling 1

  • setting ‘sample bundaries’ depth interviewing)

Sampling 2

Conc

(Goldthorpe 2007; Hacking 1990; Halsey 2004:23)

References and further readings

Byrne, D. S. 2002. Interpreting Quantitative Data. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE.
Gerson, Kathleen, and Sarah Damaske. 2020. The Science and Art of Interviewing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goldthorpe, John H. 2007. On Sociology (Vol 2). Vols. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
Hacking, Ian. 1990. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge [England] ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Halsey, A. H. 2004. A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.